My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story [Paperback]

Latifa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 9, 2003

Born into a middle-class Afghan family in Kabul in 1980, Latifa had a conventional childhood. Then, Taliban soldiers seized power in Kabul. And from that moment, Latifa, just sixteen, became a prisoner in her own home. The simplest and most basic freedoms were forbidden. She was forced to put on a chadri, the state-mandated uniform that covered her entire body. Disbelief at having to hide herself was soon replaced by fear, the fear of being whipped or stoned like women she'd seen. My Forbidden Face provides a moving and highly personal account of life under the Taliban regime. With painful honesty and clarity, Latifa describes her ordered world falling apart, in the name of a fanaticism that she could not comprehend, and replaced by a world where terror and oppression reign.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Readers who want to know what life was really like when the Taliban ruled Kabul should turn off CNN and read this book. Latifa (who writes under a pseudonym) was a 16-year-old aspiring journalist when her brother rushed home one day in late 1996 with word that the white flag of the Taliban flew over their school and mosque. She writes, "We knew the Taliban were not far away... but no one truly believed they would manage to enter Kabul." The bizarre edicts of the women-suppressing regime slowly become a reality: women weren't allowed outside the home unless they were shrouded in a "chadri" (which covers the face and arms, unlike a burka, which covers the entire body and according to Latifa is worn only in distant provinces) and accompanied by a male relative. "A girl is not allowed to converse with a young man. Infraction of this law will lead to the immediate marriage of the offenders." No wearing of bright colors or lipstick; no medical care from a male doctor. And women doctors were not allowed to work, essentially cutting off medical care for women. Latifa's story puts a face on these now-familiar rules, and conveys the sheer boredom of the lively teenager-turned-hermit and the desperation of not knowing if she'll ever complete her education in such an upside-down world. Despite its rushed ending (the family fled to France in May 2001 with the help of French Elle) and the occasional reminder that the author is now only 22 (there's talk of Madonna, Brooke Shields, fashion and Indian films), this memoir is one instance where a thousand words are worth more than any picture.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Latifa was only 16 when the Taliban overran Kabul, changing her life dramatically. On the morning of September 26, 1996--the day the Taliban took Kabul--Latifa, her sister, Soraya, and their father drove to Aryana Square and saw the body of the murdered former president, Najibullah. The Taliban began issuing edicts, forbidding women to leave their houses without a close male relative to escort them; forcing them to wear chadris, which cover their entire bodies; and refusing to allow them to work. Latifa, Soraya, and their mother suffered greatly, falling into depression. Their mother, a doctor, continued to see patients secretly, and Latifa eventually started an underground school for girls, an action that put both her and her students at great risk. Latifa and her parents left Afghanistan to be interviewed by the French magazine Elle, but when they tried to return, they discovered that the Taliban had declared them enemies of the state. A moving firsthand account with a real sense of immediacy. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Miramax (July 9, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401359256
• ISBN-13: 978-1401359256
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #374,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What a story!, January 13, 2006

By 

Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Forbidden Face (Audio Cassette)

This book provides a first-hand account of daily life in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Latifa (a pseudonym made necessary by death threats to the author and her family members) lived with her family in a middle-class area of Kabul. Her country had been at war her entire life. Over the years, Latifa and her family members struggled to be apolitical just so they could survive the frequent regime changes. One of her brothers served in the army under the Soviets, only to become a political prisoner under the regime; another was sent to university in Dushanbe, Tajikistan on a Soviet scholarship. When the Taliban took over Kabul, Latifa found herself virtually imprisoned in her apartment, forbidden by the Taliban from attending the university where she had just passed her entrance exams. Her sister had been an airline stewardess and her mother a doctor, but both were forbidden from continuing their professions. Her father was a businessman, whose Kabul warehouses were being continually destroyed in battle.

In this book, Latifa describes daily life for her family after the Taliban took control. She describes listening to edicts on the radio, forbidding women from working and girls from going to school. Women and girls were also not allowed to be treated by male doctors, and since women doctors were forbidden from practicing, this effectively shut half the population out from being able to receive any kind of health care. Women had to be covered from head to toe if they were to go out in public, and they had to be escorted by a male relative. On one of the few times Latifa dared go out of her apartment for a walk, she witnessed a horrific beating of women whose feet were covered but who had committed the apparently reprehensible crime of wearing the wrong color shoes.

At the beginning of her story, Latifa is an ordinary teenager, excited with fancy dresses and movie stars. But as the years go by, and she finds herself and all other women that she knows forbidden from participating in society in any, Latifa becomes more and more concerned with women's issues-indeed she becomes a feminist, although she had most likely never heard the term before. It's fascinating to read in her descriptions of childhood in Kabul of what a relatively normal life her family had been able to lead, despite the wars and political upheavals. This contrasts sharply with the changes brought in by the Taliban, when marriages could no longer be celebrated, and teachers could be beaten for providing lessons to little girls.

Latifa's occasional references to Dubai kept bringing back my own memories of the young Emirati women I taught there at about the same time Latifa was stuck in her apartment. In class one day at the height of Taliban power, I asked the students to construct an argument for why women should be educated. "But why?" they asked in shock. "Everyone knows women should be educated. No one would say otherwise-it's in the Q'uran." When I tried to tell them that the Taliban had forbidden women or girls from getting any kind of education in the Islamic republic of Afghanistan, they vociferously denied that this could be so. If only this book had been available then-perhaps the students might have believed Latifa's word, coming from a fellow Muslim girl, if they wouldn't believe mine. (Has it been translated into Arabic? Is it on the list of banned books for the Emirates?) This is a very-well written, gripping account of Afghani life from the point of view of an ordinary citizen, and highly recommended to anyone who wants to further their understanding of the Afghan society and attitudes towards the Taliban.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars FALLS SHORT, BUT STILL WORTH READING, June 10, 2003

By 

S. Calhoun "rhymeswithorange" (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story (Hardcover)

The publication of MY HIDDEN FACE: GROWING UP UNDER THE TALIBAN is timely due to the recent interest in Middle East issues. The treatment of women in this region of the world is astounding to some and horrifying to others [I put myself in the last category]. Women living under Taliban rule are the worldwide epitome of individuals stripped of all their humanitarian rights. Forced to remain in their homes unless escorted by a husband, brother, or father outside Afghani women were virtually cut off from society and forced to withdraw themselves for their own safety and survival. If they do venture outside they are banned from revealing their face in public women must wear the hooded garment often known as a burqa or chadri. The cover of this book sends shivers down my spine each time I view at it as a representation of society gone wrong. To add insult to injury this is done in the name of religion. Indeed this issue is fascinating and deserves much attention even after the Taliban was defeated.

I looked forward to reading Latifa's account of growing up female under Taliban rule (as the subtitle revealed). However, I felt a little disappointed when most of her recollections dealt with her life in Kabul *before* Taliban rule. Her observations of how her life has changed since she was banned from education and work were excellent but short. Rather, she delves into her past and recounts how she lived under Soviet rule and subsequent tribal leaders. To read about the earlier sections of her life was good but I feel that the title of this book is misleading. In addition, chapters toward the conclusion of the book were confusing and convoluted as she jumped from one time period to another without any context or explanation. It appeared that she was hurrying to finish the remaining chapters in a mad dash.

Regardless, MY FORBIDDEN FACE is a worthwhile read and suggested to all those who are interested. Latifa succeeds in putting a [human] perspective to this horrifying phenomenon. Hopefully history will not repeat.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely gripping: NEVER FORGET what women endured, August 22, 2002

By 

Joel L. Gandelman (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: My Forbidden Face: Growing Up Under the Taliban: A Young Woman's Story (Hardcover)

Latifa's nonfictional My Forbidden Face is absolutely DEVASTATING -- to defenders of the Taliban's rule and those who somehow still insist that women weren't systematically mentally and physically brutalized under their thankfully vanished rule. This is a TRUE motivational book: thoughtful -- and compassionate -- people of ALL religions will want to ensure that human beings are never EVER treated like this again. Are there REALLY people who consider human life as cheap as a crow's feather (or considerably cheaper)? The events of the past year aside, just Read My Forbidden Face. Your answer (y-e-s) is HERE.

This book is written by Latifa (a pen name), a 22-year-old woman who details how her life was "confiscated" from her by the Taliban in Kabul when she was 16. This compelling and super fast-read (and no, the fact it's a translation does not diminish its impact one iota) raises several issues: the way women were treated under Taliban rule, the low value placed on human life, how countries become pawns of other countries -- and how books are so much more effective than film. t.v. or cable in communicating a real life horror story through the eyes...and thoughts...of a young dismayed woman.

Bit by bit she recounts how, as a teen indeed influenced by Western culture's music and cultural figures (she had a poster of Brook Shields on her wall.) her world was turned upside down when the Taliban, taking advantage of warring factions and supported by Pakistani intelligence and the United States, hijacked her country.

Banks closed. Radios and t.v.s were literally shattered to smithereens by the new fundamentalist rulers. Tangles of once-innocent cassette tape became bittersweet symbols, she writes, "hanging in the trees, swaying in the autumn breeze like sinister wreaths." Spies were everywhere. A Taliban-supporting mother went crazy after her son was brutally was beaten to death by the new regime's thugs for his heinous crime -- playing a VCR. Teenage boys were forced to slap other teen boys as punishment or face their own, even more brutal punishment.

Talifa recounts this systematically and you get a sinking feeling as she goes on about women being beaten for wearing white. Women being executed in the soccer stadium for going out without a man or not dressing in "chandra" (covering her arms and face) clothing, the wearing of which she likens to a mobile "jail cell." Official mutilations of the disobedient, for even tiny infractions, were routine.

A highly poignant scene recounts how she released her beloved canary, figuring it would be outlawed -- as it indeed was, along with tea kettles and any form of whistling. Even kids playthings were taboo:"Poor little boys, and poor Afghanistan!" she writes. " Those kites once looks so lovely in our skies.''

A key triumph is how she describes her sense of loss and grief over the fact that under the Taliban the only future she faced was being a virtual house prisoner. As a girl, she
dreamed of being journalist, but the regime banned careers or education for women. A highly effective passage recounts precisely what it was like for a young woman to stay
home, supremely bored, looking at every nook and cranny, and having to "wander around my home like a convict taking a tour of her cell...This time they're really killing us, killing
all girls and women. They're killing us stealthily, in silence..''

In the end, the gang rapes of women, the executions, the daily horrors manifested by the draconian Taliban decrees did not terrorize her as much as spark courageous defiance, so she got involved in an underground school to give youngster a chance at a non-Taliban education. When this book was published she was living in exile in France. More gripping than any cable or television special, more dramatic than any movie, this quick-but-vital read is a MUST. Read it, gift it, pass it along...and never forget it as more daily events unfold.